Thursday, September 4, 2008

Stray Dog Rescued on Hairy Intersection

I nearly had a heart attack yesterday driving back from the video store. On the intersection of Garden Grove and Harbor, a little stray terrier was having a merry time romping in the middle of street traffic. John immediately said we should try to catch it before it resembled pizza pie. Agreed. We parked and began our search. I went one way and John the other.

He found her first, his hands under the dog's pits as far away from his body as possible. I understood why when I got nearer. The seven pound dog was crawling with fleas...hundreds of them! I thought of my car getting infested by the critters and I nearly balked, but what could we do, we had to do something. I remembered a canvas shopping bag in the car and we placed the little thing there. At this point, the dog which we later named Ezra even though she was a girl, was just taking everything calmly.

The moment we got home, we gave the dog a twenty minute bath - until the fleas drowned. Did I mention there were hundreds of them - in her ears, snout, body, derriere and what have you. We dried her and put Advantage anti-flea medicine behind her neck which should last a month. During this grueling experience, our two veterano dogs were putting on their best, most earth shattering barks to let us know they didn't appreciate the temporary addition to the family.

The puppy turned out to be even tempered and loving. She hardly made a sound - but that's probably because Penny and Little were putting on such a row. Anyway, I love her already and that's dangerous. We can't handle three dogs. We go on vacation often plus we have a tank full of fish, two parakeets, and a small parrot.

I started thinking about giving Little back to my brother-in-law who dropped her on our laps when he and his then-girlfriend decided not to keep her. She's a weird little thing, always burping and dripping water everywhere because of her snaggle inbred teeth. The white puffer has a drinking problem as well. She is addicted to water, so she has a peeing problem. Plus I've never really cared for chihuahuas. Little out, Ezra in. But John shook his head at this blasphemy, signaling he loved Little.

I have to admit, I love Little, too, despite her weirdo character. So I guess there's no way we can keep Ezra. All we can do is find her a loving home. Good luck to us.